Today I tried the first of my many experimental, all-natural face mask recipes. I went with this one first for two reasons:

I already owned both things and didn’t need to go to the store.

This is a cleansing, spot-treating mask that’s meant to vanquish a bad blackhead breakout, which is exactly what I need today.

Overall rating, on the pizza scale*: A little burnt. Some people like it that way, but it’s not for me.

*the pizza scale is an arbitrary scale my friends and I made up in college for rating new music to put on the radio station. Burnt pizza is a negative, cheese pizza is pretty indifferent, pepperoni is a comfortable yes, bacon is an enthusiastic yes, and throwing on all kinds of excessive extra toppings is the MOST enthusiastic yes.

Read on for details – or as the kids say, “the deets”. Sorry, I’m frequently a 35 year-old soccer mom in a twenty two year-old’s body.

Then, as instructed, I mixed the two ingredients in an adorably tiny mason jar, and added a drop of my good friend cedarwood for added support. The result was much thinner than I expected so I added extra baking soda. The situation did not improve.

After applying the mask to my squeaky clean cheeks, I was a little surprised to find that it wasn’t really even visible on my face. It really just looked like I’d been a little bit sweaty today.

The next step, according to the original instructions, was to rub gently in circles on my face for 5 to 10 minutes. After about 1 minute, my face started to feel very raw and I gave up, but here’s evidence that I did it (while my boyfriend was playing the Dragon Ball Z theme song in the other room…the rhythm was encouraging at least).

And lastly, I removed the mask with cool water and patted dry with a towel. Below is my very dry and raw face, which I then remedied with my favorite DIY moisturizer.

Results: This was definitely an intense scrub. I thought that I needed to kill some blackheads but I feel like I killed a good layer or two of healthy oils. I would only recommend this mask to someone with true oily skin. On the plus side, though, I now have a purpose for one of my tiny mason jars.

Try this out yourself and show me your results! Post with #SCNFaceMaskTrials and I’ll share it!